2022 in review (1): Three things I learnt
This year [re]taught me three things: to cry, to pray, to read
To cry
For most of my life, certainly almost all my adult life I have been a fairly unemotional person. I don't emote, I don't physically express feelings, I have just *existed*. It has been a running joke among my friends, my robot existence. I could have counted on one hand the number of times in my adulthood that I cried, or even got close to crying.
This year something in me broke. The events that overwhelmed me at the start of the year cracked my stone heart and acted as a catalyst to a greater sensitivity and fragility in general. I am still deeply saddened about the cause of that emotional upheaval: it still moves me to tears from time to time. And yet, I also recognise that out of thay sorrow has come at least one good thing, that I am now moved emotionally about a great many other things that I previously would not have been.
Not that I am always a mess of weeping, but I am often on the verge of tears over things that are sad. Over all sorts of things, but especially sad things. It is like I have (finally) become an emotionally sensitive person! Who knew this was even possible! I remember earlier in the year watching a show about dogs and their trainers and one owner decided they weren't going to keep the dog beyond the program. I felt myself choke up. Old Seumas would be "c'mon, it's a dog on tv", New Seumas is more like, "oooh, the poor dog". More seriously and more recently, I was reading a friend’s eulogy for their mother, and found myself overcome with tears. My heart has learnt to grieve with others’.
I think my own emotional pain has made a new possibility for me to genuinely empathise with others. I cry when I hear of injustices in the world. I get emotional when I hear of people coming to faith in Christ. I cry when I hear of people's heartache and tragedies, I cry when I listen to how people's lives got turned around and they 'made good', I cry when I hear the work of God in people's lives, and I cry at death. I am moved by the tragic and painful, as well as the beautiful and redemptive.
And so for this, I thank God. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I am thankful to have learnt how to cry again. I think it has made me more human.
To pray
This year also drove me to reinvigorate my prayer life. I felt my deep dependence upon God in every aspect of my life and every fibre of my being. I turned to the Psalms first of all, to give words to my longings. I then spent time reading about prayer in order to reschool myself in how to do it well. The result has been a twice daily habit of prayer and psalms, and Scripture more broadly, which has been reshaping me personally and spiritually. I am a different, and better, person for the habit. I also started using Prayermate. More recently, I have started using the Daily Prayer Project to structure morning and evening prayer for myself. Daily readings in the Psalms in different languages, OT and NT readings, prayers drawn from various liturgical and ecclesiastical traditions, and then a growing habit of praying for others. I can see how God has used this year to deepen and strengthen my relationship to him through prayer, and the growing dependence upon him in new and rich ways. It's not that I was necessarily not prayerful before, but I can honestly (and without boasting) say that I am a person now whose daily life is characterised by prayer and in fact deepening prayer for myself, and for others.
For this too, I am thankful.
To read
In my university days I read a lot, fiction and non-fiction. By seminary I mostly read non-fiction, I gave up the habit of reading much fiction. Since my PhD days I have found myself reading less and reading less broadly. This year also brought a reawakening to the joy of reading and intellectual engagement. I think the catalyst for this is a bit more complex, and probably harder to articulate. In short, I knew I wanted to be a reader, and I wanted to make it a habit to read more, and so I started by reading about reading.
This blog itself is a part of the renewed desire to read. And so I have made it a renewed habit to spend time regularly reading, and then writing out of that reading. That's partly why so many posts are just book reviews - writing helps me reprocess what I've read. This is a gift of a gracious God to renew my intellectual life in this way. In another post I'll give you a wrap-up of all the books I've read this year, but reading intellectually for the sheer pleasure of reading and expanding the mind, is a joy in itself, and is reconnecting me to a life of the mind that had lay dormant for a little to long.
For this too, I am thankful.
So to recap of 2022 in a nutshell, it has been a very hard year in a couple of specific ways, but God has used it for my good in many ways. I had hard lessons to learn and needed some strong medicine. Would that I could have learnt these things without the pain that has been involved, but it is what it is, and I am thankful for God being at work in all things for those that love him, even me.